Germany may have the loosest smoking laws in the western world. Almost any restaurant or café plumes with a gray haze around dinnertime, and colorful ads in magazines, on the Web, and even on TV encourage people to join the fun. But on Tuesday, an EU court ruled that Germany's advertising freedoms flaunt a European ban and give German media an unfair edge in the European single market.

The recommendation likely marks the end of a long legal fight -- Berlin has been appealing the ban since 1998. A German doctors' group applauded, saying it was appropriate "to forbid advertising by an industry that makes a deadly product," but German editorial pages on Wednesday morning are puffing with indignation.

"The EU isn't responsible for health policy," fumes the right-leaning daily Die Welt, whose editors think a public-health law has been foisted on Europe through the "magic trick" of an argument about markets. "What sounds like a cheap farce is really a scandal," they write. "Why not ban the German language? German is also a market barrier for a local paper that may want to sell copies in France." Seriously, though, the paper writes -- the integrity of domestic markets is the "centerpiece of European integration," and meddling with them won't win Brussels any fans. "In a free market, advertising for a legal product simply cannot be illegal."

The Financial Times Deutschland agrees. "Anyone who sees this as a triumph for the anti-smoking movement should take a deep breath," the editors write. "(The EU court) didn't rule on the damage done by cigarette ads. It ruled on something politically much more important -- the question of what should be decided by a nation's government and what should be regulated by Brussels." They don't think this will be the last time EU courts will deal with the question of a single market, and they wonder exactly "which European firm" could be hurt by a German publication running an ad for cigarettes -- "and in what way."

In a wider-ranging editorial that seems to have been written before the court formally ruled, the center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung argues that smoking rights in general should be worked out by restaurant owners and the people they serve, not by politicians. "Two kinds of people are unpalatable: Smokers who are proud of their addiction, and nonsmokers who insist on protections where their health isn't even threatened. For everyone else it has to be possible to live in society with a certain measure of goodwill, without having every detail regulated from above."

Only the left-leaning Berliner Zeitung thought the ban was a good idea. "Now, in the near future in Germany cigarette ads will only appear on billboards and in cinemas (before movies) … In essence, this is a good thing and correct. Dozens of studies have shownh that cigarette ads promote a taste for cigarettes, especially among the young." In principle, though, the paper thinks the court's decision represents "a clear overstepping of its bounds." German health policy will now be influenced "through a back door" by EU law. But the paper thinks this "nasty encroachment by Brussels" could have been avoided if the German government had passed a "long overdue" ban on tobacco ads -- one that would include billboards and movie screens.